Stealing People

  ‘So you’ve been in both.’

  Reef nodded.

  ‘Did you get the job of kidnapping Siena Casey from one of your marine, army or intelligence contacts?’

  ‘I worked closely with a military intelligence officer in Helmand Province in 2006. We kept in touch after I quit the marines. She saved me and my unit’s arse so many times in Helmand I couldn’t … I mean, I owed her big time. She freaked me out by knowing about all my drug interests, said she’d been following my career very closely for the last five years. Made out I was the perfect candidate for the operation. Told me Siena was a real coke whore and psychonaut. I’ve got a line into a Mexican who can deliver almost pure cocaine and I got this guy in a lab up north who engineers pills for me from different source materials. I found her at this party, called myself Joe, tempted her in with the coke and knocked her out with some kratom-based 7-hydroxymitragynine.’

  ‘How did you deliver her?’

  ‘I put her in a waiting car.’

  ‘Where did that car go?’

  ‘I don’t know. He dropped me off at my place in Whitechapel.’

  ‘What else did you know about the operation you were involved in?’

  ‘Nothing until the driver and I got talking and he told me that Siena was the fourth person to be kidnapped that night and there would be two more. One in the morning and another the following day. That was it.’

  ‘Now this is going to be a difficult one,’ said Boxer. ‘What’s the name of your friend, the military intelligence officer?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’

  Silence. Boxer stood, flicked the kettle back on. The roar filled the room once more. Leo’s legs twitched as if he was going to pee his pants. Mercy put her hands over her ears.

  ‘I’m going to tell you something that I hope will be persuasive,’ said Boxer, as the roar reached its highest pitch, the water rumbling in the kettle’s belly. ‘This group your friend is working for, they’ve kidnapped our daughter and they’re holding her lover and torturing him. And as your friend Leo knows, I’ve just lost someone very important to me tonight and the last thing I care about is you, because you steal people and you peddle drugs. I will have no compunction about making you and Leo scream this house down to get the answer I want. You understand.’

  The kettle clicked off.

  ‘Tell him. For fuck’s sake tell him,’ said Leo.

  Boxer leaned over, picked up the kettle, sat back down on the chair, put a heel into the back of Reef ’s head. Put the Walther P99 to the small of his back so that he knew it was there.

  ‘Five, four, three, two, one, zero.’

  The water trickled down on to Reef ’s bare back. He screamed.

  ‘Stop it!’ roared Mercy.

  ‘Now it’s Leo’s turn,’ said Boxer, cautioning Mercy with a look that told her this was how it had to be.

  Reef ’s back already had a long blistered streak down the middle.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Reef.’

  ‘This’ll go on all night,’ said Boxer. ‘One to the other. All night. I only stop when there’s no water left in the tap. The gun is pointing at your leg, Reef.’ He stood up, moved over to Leo. ‘You move and you’ll lose your knee. I’ve already told Leo what sort of ammo there is in this gun, and it’s not nice. Hollow points. You know what they are, don’t you, Reef ?’

  Mercy was hyperventilating.

  ‘Five, four, three …’

  ‘For fucking hell’s sake, Reef !’ roared Leo.

  ‘… two, one, zero.’

  The boiling water trickled down. Leo squealed and wriggled under Boxer’s foot. He kicked him in the head.

  ‘Keep still.’

  He turned back to Reef.

  ‘Stop this, now!’ said Mercy.

  ‘You want to see Marcus alive?’ said Boxer. ‘This is the only language these people understand.’

  ‘I can’t be doing with this,’ said Mercy. ‘This is not—’

  ‘Then leave,’ said Boxer. ‘Reef, you roll over. I’m going to pour this boiling water in your ear this time.’

  ‘Her name is Jennifer Cook,’ said Reef. ‘But she’s known as Jeff. Jeff Cook.’

  ‘Thank you, Reef … for your co-operation.’

  20

  00.35, 17 January 2014

  Silvertown Way, London E16

  It had been getting more and more difficult for Jess to keep her distance from the Ford Focus since they’d edged out towards the Olympic Park around Stratford. There just wasn’t the traffic. She’d found herself slowing down, leaving hundreds of metres between them, begging cars to overtake, in the hope that she wouldn’t be too obvious. Then Todd had abruptly headed south on a busier road and she’d felt more comfortable amongst the traffic until he’d turned into a complex of blocks of flats.

  She’d held back until the last moment and had seen him pull up at the end of a street that according to her sat nav was a dead end leading down to the Royal Victoria Dock. She parked opposite some modern terraced housing, got out of the car. She wanted to see where he was going, to get the exact block of flats he went into.

  Todd set off on foot towards the dock. Jess grabbed the only weapon she had from the glove compartment: a folding knife with a four-inch blade. She followed him down the mews, which kinked at the end and came out on to the dock. Lights from the Crowne Plaza Docklands and the Hotel Ibis flickered in the vast expanse of water close to the ExCel Exhibition and Conference Centre.

  She ran up some steps and tracked the dockside path from behind a hedge, trying to follow Todd, but he’d disappeared. She slid down the bank on to the walkway, crouching, looking left and right, but there was no one. The lights from the flats showed the old grey dock cranes with their jibs pointed skyward into the dark night like gargantuan saluting warriors awaiting the return of their leader. Jess decided on retreat. Feeling alone and exposed, she headed back towards the car. And that was when Todd reappeared in front of her: short, wide, a powerful, immovable presence. She eased the knife from her pocket, opened it behind her back, held it with the blade up her sleeve slightly behind her right thigh.

  ‘So it’s you,’ said Todd, a little surprised, but not as surprised as she’d expected given her return from the dead.

  ‘Thought you’d killed me off, Todd?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, as it happens, I did,’ he said. ‘Glad I didn’t teach you too much about how to follow a car. Been aware of you for the last half-hour or so. Had to see who it was. You want to tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘You want to tell me why you sent that fucking Ukrainian round to kill me?’

  ‘That’s kinda obvious,’ said Todd. ‘Yours ain’t. I’m interested. Somebody had to help you deal with that guy. You wouldn’t have been able to handle him on your own.’

  ‘I thought we had something going,’ said Jess, the fear tearing through her, desperate for a passer-by, but it was hopeless out there in the wind-whipped darkness, the water roughing up the edge of the freezing dock.

  ‘We did,’ said Todd. ‘You were a terrific lay, but – and don’t take this badly – not the best.’

  ‘You didn’t have to have me killed for that, did you?’

  He grunted a mirthless laugh.

  ‘I got to hand it to you, Jess,’ he said. ‘I like a chick with humour under stress.’

  ‘And why didn’t you kill me yourself ?’

  ‘Well, first of all I don’t want to be seen going into or coming out of a flat where a dead body is going to be found, and yeah, you’re a hard little bitch, maybe a bit masculine for my taste, but I kinda liked you. And you had the sense of humour. I dig that in a chick.’

  ‘My mum was always telling me I had talent,’ she said, nearly sad now.

  ‘Just tell me what’s going on and I’ll finish it.’

  She wondered if she could outrun him, but outrun him where? Back to the car? Around the dock? Her heart was leaping in her chest.

&n
bsp; ‘Nothing to tell.’

  ‘Somebody helped you,’ said Todd, pointing a finger at her now. ‘You tell me that name and I won’t hurt you. You don’t and you’ll learn something new about pain. I fuckin’ promise you that, little girl.’

  Anger flashed through her at those words. Todd ducked low and came in for the kill. She hopped up, sending out a kick that landed on his cheekbone and stopped him in his tracks, dropping him to one knee. She followed it with another swiping kick from her right foot, but he was quick enough to catch it and she had to turn and drop on to her hands while twisting and hammering her left heel into the side of his head. It was a good contact and she heard him moan with its concussive power. It meant he let go of her other foot. She wheeled round on both feet and was shocked to find him still conscious. Either of those blows would have dropped a normal man, but Todd Bone was still standing.

  ‘Didn’t know you were so handy with those feet,’ he said, just to let her know he wasn’t fazed.

  She feinted with her right foot and brought the left round in what she hoped would be another swiping knockout blow, but this time he ducked and the foot flew over his head with such speed that she lost her balance. She rolled across the tarmac to the grass verge. He was on her in that fraction of a second, his full weight descending, crushing on to her chest, and she remembered his pectorals and shoulders and knew that he must have been bench-pressing all his adult life. She felt herself fading under his closing power and with one last effort swung her hand round and drove the knife into his side.

  He went rigid and gasped as the sliver of steel ran in between his ribs. He knew then what he had to do, and before she had time to withdraw and stab again, he’d grabbed her by the ponytail, pulled it hard one way while ramming her chin with the ball of his palm in the opposite direction. The snap of her neck was audible. Everything went out of her. She deflated underneath him. There was a sigh as her last breath fled across the cold water, her mouth slackened and the glint in her eye dulled.

  He extricated himself as if from a complex and shuddering sexual climax. The pain sliced through his innards. He had to squeeze his eyes shut, take shallow breaths to get through it. He came up on to his knees and with superhuman effort hauled Jess across to the water’s edge. He fell back with the excruciating pain in his side, saw the knife still in her fist. He worked it out and threw it as far into the dock as he could. Then he kicked her over the edge with both feet.

  There was a gust of fiercely cold wind and a splash. He rolled on to his good side, got messily to his feet and staggered back to his car.

  Boxer had secured Reef and Leo with spare wire and tubing left over from the hydroponic and nutrient system. He and Mercy were in the corridor on either side of the stairs with the door open so that he could keep an eye on them. He sensed a change in her towards him.

  ‘What are we going to do with them?’ she asked.

  ‘We can’t afford to have them out there,’ said Boxer. ‘Reef, especially, has to be taken out of the game.’

  ‘You don’t mean …’

  ‘What I mean is we call your boss and get the drug squad in,’ said Boxer, shaking his head. ‘Reef ’s the one who kidnapped Siena Casey and he’s running cannabis farms all over the capital. They’ll want to talk to him, find out all his connections. It will take some time. Ryder will be mad keen to take him apart. MI5 and the CIA will want to parse him to pieces. He’s your first coup of the campaign. It deflects a lot of future attention … if you know what I mean.’

  ‘How are we going to explain your … I mean, the interrogation technique. Given that you’re not supposed to be here.’

  ‘It wasn’t a technique, just an unfortunate spillage whilst making coffee during questioning.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can be like this,’ she said, in a voice so low he almost didn’t hear her.

  ‘You asked me here. You told me to come armed. You made a very difficult request of me earlier today and I said I would help you in any way I can. We have to remember that we only care about Marcus and Amy. And we’ve got another crucial lead from this scenario. It didn’t come free. These things never do. Reef had his loyalties. I admire him for that.’

  ‘Thanks for reminding me about the request,’ said Mercy.

  ‘Are you withdrawing now that you’ve seen the cost?’ asked Boxer. ‘People ask these things of me, but not many actually see what it takes. I can understand if you …’

  He petered out. Silence in the stairwell.

  ‘Ask these things of you?’ she said, peering at him in the darkness.

  ‘Answer the question.’

  Mercy stared down into the pit of the abandoned house.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Then call your boss and the drug squad,’ said Boxer. ‘We’ve got more work to do. There’s going to come a time when they feel our pressure and they’ll come back at us, threaten us with pain and suffering for Amy and Marcus. So let’s get moving. I’ll talk to these boys and make sure they keep quiet.’

  Mercy went downstairs to make the calls. Boxer sat with the two boys. Leo was grunting under the discomfort of his binding, ankles connected to wrists. Reef was calm, forehead resting on the floorboards, doing some yogic breathing.

  ‘I’m sorry we can’t release you,’ said Boxer. ‘I got nothing against what you’re doing here, Leo. But you, Reef, you kidnapped someone. That’s a heavy-duty crime. Not the sort of thing I expect from an ex-marine. You’re going to have to pay for it. You’re going to have to answer a lot of questions. During that questioning I don’t want you to talk about me or the interrogation I just put you through, OK?’

  ‘What’s in it for me?’

  ‘I won’t come after you.’

  ‘Now that you put it like that …’ said Reef.

  ‘The same applies to you, Leo. You with me?’

  ‘I’m with you,’ he said, grunting with pain.

  ‘You need to take up yoga like your friend,’ said Boxer. ‘You’re in poor shape. I’m going now and I don’t want you to make me come after you.’

  Mercy came back up the stairs, beckoned to him.

  ‘They’re on their way.’

  ‘OK. I’m out of here.’

  ‘How am I going to explain being able to overpower two men and tie them up?’

  ‘You’ll think of something, but don’t waste time on it. We’ve got to maintain momentum. This woman Jeff Cook, we have to find her. She could be anywhere by now.’

  At 01.25, an email arrived in the central communications office in the kidnap unit. It was addressed to DCS Oscar Hines.

  We will only talk and negotiate with one kidnap consultant for all six kidnap victims. That consultant will be ‘Colonel’ Ryder Forsyth. He must have the power to act on behalf of all the victims. We will not be drawn into conducting negotiations separately. We know this goes against all the principles of extremely wealthy individuals, who believe that they and they alone are the world’s most important people, but this is a lesson in how the rest of the world has to live under their colossal capital power.

  They have had a substantial amount of time in which to put together the expenses payment we asked for when their children were taken. This £25 million per hostage is a non-negotiable amount and does not represent a ransom payment in any way. It only allows the victims’ parents to remain in the game with the knowledge that their offspring are alive and well. However, failure of any one family to make their payment will result in a punishment to the whole group of hostages. The punishment will be arbitrary and random, but will involve considerable pain and distress to all victims, who will witness each other’s agony. All we can guarantee is that it will not result in death. If this punishment does not bring forth the required payment then it will result in the death of one of the hostages but not necessarily the child of the parents who have withheld the payment. We realise that this is not fair, but we’re not in a fair world, as many of you have now come to understand.

  Once we have rece
ived your agreement to these basic terms, we will give instructions as to where and when and in what denominations that £150 million in cash is to be deposited. Your reply is expected by 01.45. Failure to respond in the affirmative will result in punishment being administered to one hostage every minute that you’re late until a consensus has been reached. We are willing to provide webcam evidence of the punishments. All your efforts at negotiation should be between the hostages’ parents and not with us. We will not negotiate. We await your response.

  Hines was immediately woken from sleep on a camp bed in his office. He ordered the email to be forwarded to MI5 and the CIA representatives as well as the kidnap consultants, from whom he demanded an immediate reaction from the parents.

  The first response came from Uttam Sarkar, who was still in Mumbai and who absolutely refused to be ‘browbeaten’ by this gang of ‘bloody kidnappers’. He proceeded to reveal that not only had he made no efforts to raise the £25 million for ‘expenses’, but also that he would have nothing to do with Ryder Forsyth nor even the consultant appointed by Oscar Hines. He had his own man who would fly in with him later this morning, a retired intelligence officer from the Indian equivalent of MI6, the Research and Analysis Wing, who, he said, would take over from the ‘temporary’ consultant on arrival.

  Hines began to realise just how long the following eighteen minutes were going to be, but since the meeting in Thames House that morning, a lot of measures had been put in place. The first of them being to find the closest contacts to the wealthy individuals concerned, who had the greatest powers of persuasion over them. In the case of Uttam Sarkar, it was his brother, the Minister for Commerce and Industry, Manish Sarkar.

  The brothers knew each other very well, and the first thing that Manish Sarkar had done when he’d been approached that morning was to talk to his close friend the finance minister, who had agreed to make £25 million available in London in the event that it was needed. The most complicated aspect of this negotiation was how the money would be repaid if it was lost. The Sarkars didn’t pay out money unnecessarily, and after protracted discussions with Sarkar’s chief financial officer, it was agreed that they would forgo a tax break on a bauxite mining project in Tamil Nadu.